It's here!

I ordered one of these off Emirates Avenue, who's twitter account is quite helpful.
I'll be blogging about growing this, and I couldn't have picked a better time to do it; Our weather is borderline tropical and arid-deserty at the moment! :D

Let's open it up....

.......

......

DAMN FLAPS WON--- Oh, there we go.

I seem to have misplaced the pic, but it comes with instructions in EN/FR/DE/ES/IT.

I demand AR to be included.

Anyway, there's also a cute "terracotta" pot, compost and seed.

BEWARE: The Compost is inside the terracotta pot for a reason! Don't take it out! Silly little me picked it up and sprinkled water on it whilst in my hands. You could say I, LITERALLY, had a pile of manure growing in my hands. AAAAH SCIENCE. Thankfully I had the sensibility to not panic and place the cup on top of it and flip it over, problem solved.

What you're supposed to do is take the pot, compost in, and sprinkle water. It'll magically decompress the compost and you'll have mother nature inside a pot. Then, you take the seedpacket and sprikle it's contents all over the "soil" and firmly press them in:

Mmmmmm, looks delicious. Reminds me of brownies with icing sugar sprinkled on top.

Next you put it in a "saucer".

Typical of me, I decided that this sounds like something English and therefore must be related to tea, so I got that plate you put under teacups and put some water in it then placed the pot on top. Finally you put wrap it in plastic loosely.

That's what the instructions said but I tightly wrapped the thing with cling film and poked neat little airholes on top.

TA-DA

Unfortunately, they take a while to grow. ;_; I'll have to wait 4-6 weeks. T_T

My aspirations for attempting to grow one of these is that I'm hoping that it ends up like this:

:p

 

In the last TwitBookClub meeting, we discussed this issue all of the members have been noticing: 

We have this big discrepancy with the number of people who participate with us online and the people actually showing up. Yes, we've taken people's lives and the comfort and ease of posting online into consideration, but it still doesn't explain why a bunch of people RSVP and less than 15 show up.

Why aren't the others commiting?

Here are a couple of points brought up in the discussion:

• We have a date that's set in stone, even during Ramadan. It's always 11am-2pm on the 3rd Saturday of each month at an optimal location. 
• There are people who come from Sharjah and RAK.
• We have an open format: 4 books for each month, 3 picked in the meeting while the 4th from an online poll. 
• You don't have to read any book, you can just show up and join us in our discussion. You can bring anything you've been reading or have read before and suggest/talk about them.
• There have been a lot of articles written about us, and Anastasia has appeared on radio shows to talk about us. We aren't lacking any exposure.
• We've had 2 authors over, Qais Sedki & Christopher Herz, the latter who joined us via Skype all the way from NY and we "soft-launched" his book, The Last Block in Harlem, here. Unfortunately only 4 people showed up for the Feb meeting when we had Chris over. (Recording here)

After listing all these, I find it quite ironic that we have a problem with people attending. Is our format too open that it comes off as jarring and overwhelming to newcomers? Must we restrain ourselves with rules? Do people like being herded around have everything dictated to them?

The whole point of the TwitterBookClub is that we are against that! It's goal is just to get people to read, and broaden our horizons. It went against the traditional norm of picking one book to read and not showing up if you didn't read it.

So yeah, I don't really know what's going on here. Post your thoughts in the comments.

SILENCE. I SUE YOU! MyBenihana Experience A few days back I posted about Benihana opening up at the Avenues and yesterday night I decided to pass by with Nat and try it out. The service wasn’t too bad for a restaurant that’s just been open for a few days and the staff were really friendly. The restaurant itself is made up of islands and bars with a grill in the middle of each one. You sit around the grill and the chef will come to your table and prepare the food right in front of you which makes things entertaining. It’s actually why I prefer sitting at the bar in Japanese restaurants in general, since you can talk to the chef and watch them put your dish together. The problem with my experience last night though was with the food, it was disappointing to say the least. We ordered beef negimayaki for starters followed by an Orange Blossom maki and a Hibachi Chicken. The negimaki arrived looking good and was probably the best thing we had there even though I prefer Maki’s negimaki which has a richer teriyaki sauce. The Orange Blossom was very ordinary, wouldn’t order it again. Now the Hibachi chicken which is basically grilled chicken, that was the worst. The chicken was very chewy (I could swear it was undercooked if not raw) and tasted terrible. Even after I had the chef add some more teriyaki sauce in hopes of improving the taste it didn’t work. I tried to dip it into the sauces that came with the chicken but it was hard to figure out if they were actually making things worse or not. Nat only ate one piece of chicken and left the rest while I needed my protein since I’m on a strict diet and forced myself to eat my whole plate (I can do that) but the after taste was really bad. Even the rice and the veggies that came with it tasted bad AND were under cooked. Once we left I considered picking up a frozen yogurt from Pinkberry even though I hate frozen yogurts but I just needed something to get rid of the aftertaste. A few moments later we ended up at Chocolate Bar ordering the gooey chocolate cake (bye bye diet). I shot the two videos above of the chef preparing our meal. Benihana are known for the live shows they perform when preparing your dish so I was expecting to see [This] but ended up with the above . Would I go back to Benihana? No I wouldn’t. Their sashimi and maki’s are pretty cheap (KD1.5 for 5 pieces of Salmon sashimi for example) but there are two other Japanese restaurants at the Avenues, Wasabi and Maki, and I would prefer either one of those to Benihana. ___________________________________________________________________ The above is a reproduction of Mark Makhoul's original post on Kuwaiti blog 2:48AM talking about what he thought of newly opened Kuwaiti restaurant Benihana. The franchise holder of the restaurant then proceeded to issue a lawsuit against Mark, presumably with the intention of scaring him into taking down his post or perhaps agreeing to post something altogether more fawning. The company then faced a wave of public anger at its actions, choosing to ignore this, deleting negative comments from its Facebook page and blocking those who commented. Both Benihana Kuwait and the franchisor, Benihana of Tokyo, have consistently refused comment on this shameful little episode. This has already turned into a social media mismanagement case study that will run and run. They're a laughing stock. Millions of people around the world have read the story: Fast Company, BoingBoing, TheNextWeb and others have posted it (let alone traditional news media around the world). Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people have seen the story on Twitter. And it's not going to go away - bloggers around the region and beyond are posting copies of Mark's OP today - on blogs, Facebook and other social media platforms. Already, this case is prominent when you Google Benihana - and it is, of course, on their Wikipedia entry. If you're looking for Benihana Kuwait, this nasty little story is all you get. Surely these people realise that this is already game over - that if they don't reconsider their actions and act to stop this (and stopping it rests, as it always has, entirely in their hands) that they won't have a restaurant left at the end of the day? It is NOT going to go away. The case is due to have its first day in court on the 8th March. I would URGE Benihana of Tokyo to finally act responsibly and rein in its idiotic licensee before the damage to the Benihana brand globally becomes irreperable. This will start to hurt other Benihana licensees who have had no part in this. All Benihana has to do is drop the case. Copied and pasted from FakePlasticSouks & 248am. For more fun posts and madness, search for #BenihanaKUW on Twitter. Also copy and paste this to your blogs and spread the LUUURV! It's Valentine's Day! (I don't celebrate it though.. Lulz) K

As many of you might already know, I now live in Muhaisnah.

One convenient thing about living in Muhaisnah, is how easy it is to shop for groceries.

How?

I'm quite close to the Union Co-Op Hypermarket in Al Ittihad Mall.

Now, Al Ittihad Mall is a funny little mall; It doesn't have the trademarks of other malls in Dubai: No brands stores, no Huge foodcourt, no Carrefour, etc.

In other words, it isn't owned by the usual suspects, it's owned by Union Co-Op Society.

What I love about them, it's the way they decided to set themselves apart from the other malls and live up to their name, Co-Op Society.

It's become a warm fuzzy haven for all the entreprenuerial types.

Case in point, the happy little shop I stumbled upon: Desert Fox.

Desert Fox is the wet-dream of a lot of people, especially the generation who used to watch the anime dubbed in classical arabic back in the 80's and 90's! The place is a shrine to all the dubbed anime we remember including some more recent stuff.

The way it works is that it's basically in import shop, they get stuff from Japan and Hong Kong. Their prices are very reasonable!

Enough with the words! I'll let the pictures tell you what this place is all about!! (Grab a box of tissues, you'll need it.)

Gallery:

SOMEBODY STOP ME! 8D

*pulls wallet out*

-.-

No need...

*puts wallet back in pocket*

T_T

*Sigh*

Anyway, I encourage you to drop by the store, they have everything you could imagine! There's a lot of pics I couldn't inlcude thanks to the 100MB upload limit.

Hope you enjoyed it!

This is the problem I've been telling everyone about lately.

Since Chrome has a built-in Flash plugin, it clashes with the Flash plugin I installed for other stuff like Firefox or Steam.

My tabs cease to load or load indefinitely, my web pages are screwed up, my Chrome (dev build) suddenly transforms into Internet Explorer 4 on dial-up, and I pop a couple of vessels.

The proper and reasonable way to fix this is by disabling it through Chrome's plug-ins menu. Unfortunately, I get the "javascript(0):void" message everytime I click on disable. ~_~

All, I'm left with is uninstalling, which is a temporary fix till I get the "Uknown plugin has crashed" error, which in turn crashes Chrome.

*sigh*

For people who recently moved houses, you may have been reminded of how awesome your friends are; They help out with packing, moving, unpacking, and assembling.
I'd like to highlight a certain someone who everyone knows:

 

IKEA.

Yes, our faithful friend who's been there for us all these years.
I'm sure most of my friends and the people who've met me know how much I love IKEA for their simplicity and efficiency in design.
This picture shows a simple, yet elegant, shelf, RÖNNSKÄR, & the smart laundry basket that folds into a laundry bag with comfortable handles, JÄLL.
Props to my mom for getting me these despite the fact that she hates IKEA and mandated that uttering the word under her roof is blasphemous.

LIES.

Even she sees the flawless efficiency in IKEA's minimal designs! Otherwise, why did she buy them?!
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!

Another thing I want to point out is why do most people consider individuals who like, or fawn over it like me, IKEA cheap?
It's practical, simple and it works.

I just hate those L-shaped wrench/screw driver things they insist on using. It's a pain in some instances.

Anyway, I hope my mom doesn't read this, she'll murder me.

Fun fact:
Sweden, where IKEA is from, in Arabic is called السويد AlSuwaid.
My قبيلة tribe's name is السويدي AlSuwaidi.
(No, I'm not descended from Swedes, it's a funny coincidence that was pointed out by one of my friends; who went on to say that I secretly want to be Swedish, marry a Swedish woman, have funny looking Swedish babies, and live in a house furnished by IKEA.)
According to my dad, our tribe's name comes from the fact that, back in the days of nomads, we used to herd black sheep.
Suwaid سويد, is a "charming way of saying"*تصغير of Aswad أسود, which means black. The ي character usually found in Arabic tribe names means "The one", or "from", etc.

*: I have to mention that I'm not a linguist, so please correct me if you know what does تصغير mean in English.

 

Last Saturday, people were celebrating the Gregorian New Year. Last Saturday, Friday, and Thursday, my fate was sealed and I took no part in the fun.

I was moving house, or so it seemed. I would pack my car with "the little things" as my dad would call them, which in reality were heavy boxes that required two people to carry, and drive to our new and current humble abode. Then unload them all with the help of our driver.

Like any move, it wasn't as smooth as I hoped.

My father took it upon himself to cancel my nice arrangement with E-Movers and call some normal moving "company", otherwise known in colloqiual Arabic as (حمالية Hamaliyah). It's plural for (حمالي Hamali), and comes from the classical Arabic verb (حمل Hamala) which means "He carried". Who apparently are cheaper than the over-priced E-movers.

But that cheapness comes at a price...

The only thing that made them different was wrapping our stuff in "industrial clingwrap" and using those furry blankets/comforters that smell like they slept in them sweaty and in the nude, or rub their armpits with it to "keep fragile thing safe". *pukes*

I managed to save some of my stuff from that fate, alhamdli'llah (Thank God).

They also had one pickup which they attempted to fill it up with all our stuff, I'm sure they violated a ton of traffic laws, but I digress.

They managed to move our stuff in one day, so that's good.

Well, I'll be going back to unpacking...

Good Morning Everyone,

I find it quite ironic that I'm typing this on Firefox after I swore it off exactly a year ago. I've been an avid user of Chrome, which is by far the best browser I've ever used. Now why am I on Firefox again?

Yesterday was a horrible, horrible day.

I decided to try my hand at blogging again, so I setup a tumblog on the Metro on my way back to Rashidiya. I was ecstatic! I loved the tumblr layout, and it's simplicity.

Unfortunately, there were a couple of things I couldn't do on the mobile app; customizing my blog, etc.

Once I got home, I spruced it up via my PC. Then, I was typing up my 2nd post. I typed two lines and then suddenly the tab would become unresponsive. Finally, Chrome would crash.

Repeat 4 times.

Then tumblr is over capacity.

I had a one-sided conversation with tumblr, on Twitter, expressing my rage and disappointment. Then our dear @mich1mich tells me you can't comment on tomblr. I googled a bit and found out it was a limitation that could be over-ridden by Disqus and other services.

In the end, I ran back to posterous, and deleted my tumblog.

But it didn't end there...

Yes, the same shit happened all over again.

Until I get the message on Chrome saying, "The Following plug-in has become unresponsive: Shockwave Flash".

I turn it off but it doesn't work.

I google a bit and discover it's cuz the Flash I installed is clashing with the built in flash Chrome has. I think, oh, I'll just uninstall it.

But then I need it to watch trailers on Steam.

Shit.

[insert long sequence of me installing and uninstalling flash while trying out Chrome.]

In the end I decide on doing a System Restore, which obviously would affect some programs I installed and my registry that I cleaned, etc.

I did it and still nothing works.

At that moment, I was thinking "Maybe God doesn't want me to blog." ~_~

So I stop trying and  surf the net for a bit, until it happened again.

At this point, I was mad, pissed, and annoyed. Which is when I decided to reinstall Firefox and try blogging from it.

HELLO WORLD! It worked!

Unfrotunately, my dear Chrome and I are seperated till she comes out of rehab, while I fool around with my mistress Firefox.

*sigh*

So yeah, Happy New Years....

He-LOL Everyone!

The quaint picture you see here is @FahadAlAssiry's rendition of my new DP on Twitter.

Remind me to get you on next time you're in the UAE.

Now, I'm sure the rest of you are staring daggers at me right now...

Yes, I haven't uploaded any new Epicdoses. I apologize, I've been quite busy.

We have 5 epicdoses lined up that I need to get cracking on, and you'll have them soon enough; Patience is the key.

In the meantime, enjoy the festivities.

- Abdulla

P.S. I noticed I posted this on my blog and not the podcast's.. oh well, I assume most of you know about my podcast. No? --> click the link to the right

P.P.S. You can use the pic as your iPhone's HomeScreen Wallpaper!